Vista Business on modern SATA system. Impossible?

I'm thrilled to say I've never installed Vista Business on anything , that is until now and it ain't going well.
This is an Optiplex 755 that only has SATA interfaces. A friend sorta butchered this system, so we got the original install disc [reinstallation] from Dell and I'm trying it.

With the SATA operation set in 'full steam ahead' mode, vista would not load, giving the "Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for
installation" error. Microsoft's idiotic posting on the subject is of no use... i guess they did not contemplate SATA. Most of the forum postings I've seen are either wild guesses or bad. Reformatting does nothing - I had to go into setup and dumb it down to "ATA" operation. Its installing now.

Is there not a way for this OS to install & operate in full performance mode??

thx
z